This is it. This is the week I break my all-time long-time longest run of 14 miles.
Monday was a five mile fast-paced run in the Batavia Township Park. It was my first run with my AfterShokz Trekz Air (which I love, BTW). I didn’t intend on actually going as fast as I did, but the near-flat terrain combined with the nice weather (short sleeves!) combined with music (for the first time in a long time), I guess it just kinda happened. 5 miles in 40:36 (8:07 pace).
Tuesday was a slower 7 mile run in the Ohio River area. As I mentioned last week, the river is rising, and today was no exception. Part of my slower-ness was because I was looking at some of the flood ‘carnage’, and some was because I was looking at what was flooded to make sure I had a place to run through! I used the Trekz Air again (this time with some podcasts), and actually had some trouble hearing one that had a lower-than-normal volume level (I had to ‘crank it up’). That being said, I was able to hear the rushing river water under the Purple People Bridge AND hear the podcast I was listening to and I was also able to hear traffic and the podcast on 4th Street in Covington and across the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge. Considering where I run, that’s a good thing! Additionally, I don’t have any problems with Trekz Air + glasses + glasses strap (because my glasses suck and don’t like to stay on my face). 7 miles in 1:02:34 (8:56 pace).
Wednesday was a short run – form drills + 4 miles + 7 strides. As I found on Tuesday, the new road they opened in Newport has nice wide sidewalks and makes a decent connection to the Taylor Southgate Bridge. I ended up running a little bit longer, I wasn’t where I wanted to stop and told my watch to continue tracking after the last stride thinking I’d round it off to 5 miles… then I didn’t pay a lick of attention to the watch and ran right past 5.0 miles. 5.07 in 0:43:11 (8:31 pace)
Thursday was somewhat interesting. For starters, I woke up to the sound of a torrential downpour. Glasses + downpour = difficult to see. I knew from the prior evening’s weather report that it should clear up by lunch, so I ran my 7 miles then. The run was just to run, not “M pace” (which I’ve been using as tempo runs). The floodwaters were supposed to have receded, but they weren’t, and around this time the weather forecasters realized that and stopped telling us that the waters were going down and instead that they were going to continue to rise. Because I’m kinda out of my element, I ran 7.4 miles because I wanted to stop at a spot near my office (where I tend to always stop) in 1:03:43 (8:36 pace).
In the video above, I had intended to go through the floodwall gate (it was open Tuesday), but instead of turning around, I took the video and then climbed up the rocks on the floodwall and hopped the fence to get to the path on top.
Friday began with torrential downpours. Originally, I had intended to just run in the rain and deal, but as I thought about the route I intended to run, I decided it was probably pretty stupid to do in the dark because I would end up on Eastern Avenue and Riverside Drive, both are near the river. So I ran at lunch. I felt under nourished and slow, and I ran up the big hill and on the marathon course. I ended on the Purple People Bridge. The most important part of this is that I didn’t come away from the run with a stress fracture in an obscure part of my body! However, it was slow (for me) and my watch paused at some point and I figure I ran about 0.75 miles before it bugged me about going into power save mode. 15 miles in 2:24:46 (9:39 pace), not including the part my watch skipped.
The week totaled to 39 miles. Probably my longest ever.
Next week is a pull back week, and I have the Bockfest 5k on Saturday. But also next week is more flooding, they’re expecting about two more feet of water by Tuesday. Cheers!
